I was sexually molested when I was in sixth grade.
Pretty awful, huh? You want to know the worst part about it? It happened while I was sick in the hospital, dealing with an illness that had been knocking me down for the better part of a half of a year. The stomach pains I was experiencing were so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t go to school. All I could do as an innocent little twelve-year old boy was lie down, belly to belly, on top of my caring mother. I wasn’t getting better. My parents, already worried and stressed about much bigger issues, started to become concerned. Not long before Christmas, I was admitted to the hospital.
There, I stayed for a week. There, I was sexually violated by my doctor.
I don’t need to go into details, because the details aren’t important. Plus, I didn’t even remember any of this until last summer, nearly twenty-eight years later. Like most other young girls and boys, I shut this out of my memory the best I could, completely blacking it out of my existence. It’s fascinating how this Universe can work sometimes. There were ‘signs’ that I kept ignoring for the better part of ten years, signs that kept leading me to this maddening conclusion. When I finally figured it out, a lot of things started making sense. I was with Stephanie, my lovely and supportive wife, and I recall asking her a number of questions. Steph has been a Physician’s Assistant for over ten years, and she’s worked her fair share of hours in the hospital. Everything I was telling her was registering with her. It wasn’t hard to get her to believe my story.
But I wasn’t sure if I believed it. The hardest thing I’ve found during my grueling healing journey is admitting painful truths. Plus, I wasn’t even 100% certain it had happened. All I had was my intuition, my dark memories. But the evidence became too loud to ignore. I knew I had sexual trauma in some regard, because having sex and being intimate has always come with fear and uncertainty (unless I was drunk, of course). I knew I was a wounded man. And when I accepted that I was a wounded man, I was able to accept that I was a wounded boy.
I wanted clarity. I needed clarity. Although my mother was supportive when I shared this information with her, she could offer no definite proof that this had happened. She could only shake her head and say, “Oh, Ryan.” The story gets worse, too. I grew up with four brothers, and those boys needed their mom while I stayed in the hospital. I was left to sleep all alone in the hospital for days; days wondering what the hell had just happened to me.
Another sad truth is that there was hardly anything wrong with me. My doctor―the man that violated my behind―took my appendix out, assuming that was the problem. It most certainly was not. And then they diagnosed me with c-difficile―a bacterium infection that causes diarrhea and colitis (inflammation of the colon). When I shared all of this information with Stephanie, it became clear that I got c-difficile as a result of a wrongful surgery―a surgery I didn’t even need. My doctor at the Aroostook Medical Centre in Presque Isle just wanted me in a room all alone―that way he could take advantage of my helpless self. What was I to do? Remember, I was twelve.
That entire week of my life had tragic, lifelong impacts, but still, I needed clarity. So, there was only one thing left to do. It was time to go on a psychedelic healing adventure and find out the truth once and for all. I used a medicine called San Pedro (hauchuma) for this adventure, with an intention to ‘release.’ It took me a long while to get there, because, just like I was when I was twelve, I was deeply afraid.
I went to my safe place, which in my world is a nice, warm bath. After I undressed, and before I got in, I sat on the edge of the bathtub, and let my feet and ankles get in first. I noticed the hair on my legs became kinda fuzzy underneath the water (have you ever noticed that?), and that brought me back to sixth grade, only a few days after the surgery. I remembered sitting that same way all those years ago, staring at the hair on my legs underneath the water. I was crying. I was still shitting liquid, my stomach pains hardly subsided, and now I had sexual trauma to deal with for the rest of my life. That’s when I remembered. That’s when clarity started pouring in like cement.
When I got in the bathtub (yes, my safe place), I closed my eyes. I floated back in time to 1995, when I was a small boy in the hospital. I found myself hunched over, an excruciating look of terror on my face. I reached for his hand, and took it into my own. I looked him square in the eyes and told him to close them. And then I told young Ryan Graves that it would all be over soon. I told him that there were many more painful experiences in his life, and I told him to just keep closing his eyes. I told him all of the pain that we were going to collect was going to become important someday. I told him we were going to use all of this pain for power. And one day, we’re going to flip the fucking script, and start helping other men and women who have gone through similar experiences.
I told him I had his back, and that I always would.
I cried in the bathtub for what felt like days. When I got out an hour later, I felt lighter. Free. I had found clarity in what I had been looking for. And I knew that that was only the beginning of a new life.
That’s what psychedelic healing can do. What it does. It gives you the opportunity to go back and rewrite the story.
Now, my twelve year old self and I feel safe. We feel safe knowing that the worst of it is all behind us.
